


the shape of a knight

by roru



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Sort Of, Stream of Consciousness, but not TOO abstract, more or less undignified ramblings, onni-typical pessimism and depressive thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 15:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15732018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roru/pseuds/roru
Summary: There are so many things Onni wishes he could be.





	the shape of a knight

Onni is not a flower, no matter how hard he convinces himself he could be. He is not something that can grow again, petal by petal, in the harsh winters of Finland and in the dying sun. He’s tried to grow, he’s tried so hard; and like the way his bones ached all those years ago when he had his late growth spurt, his bones ache now, but with something different. Something colder and harsher and it is not the pain of growth; it’s like the winter has permanently permeated his bones, his joints. Maybe he has arthritis. Maybe it’s the sadness that’s finally found its way in.

He wishes he was a flower.

There are so many things Onni wishes he could be. He wishes he were physically bigger; taller, and wider, and just—more. Large enough to loom over mountains and hills and the tallest evergreens, big enough to take his kin curled up in both impossibly large hands and keep them safe forever hidden in the confines of Onni’s palms, and maybe his mind. He wishes he was _more._ More of what he is and more of what he could be, and he knows he could be so much better, so much more. He is from the forest, and he wishes he _was_ the forest, in all its dark endlessness, deeper than Onni knows. But it’s not enough, and he knows that, it’s not enough just to wish. He knows this. He knows that—

He wishes he was smaller. Scant, and lithe, and tiny, like his scrap of a cousin. Like a paper airplane folded by unassuming hands, like threads of grass in a fidgeting grasp. He wishes he could slip away unnoticed; in the dead of the night and under cloud cover, because no one would really notice if he were smaller, small enough so that he wasn’t even visible to the naked eye. He wishes he was never a brother, never an older cousin, never the protector. He wishes he’d died when the rest of them—

No, he wishes he was older. He’s waited hand in his own impatient hand for the day he is older and wiser and calmer and—he knows now it will not come with age. He’s nearing his thirties and the only things he has to show for it are the lines by his eyes that aren’t from smiling but do crease when he regards his sister; he has seen his own face go unrecognizable and soft in the mirror behind her head of long, thick hair. All that hair’s gone now, all of it’s gone. Onni feels like he went along with it, cut off without comprehension or apprehension. 

Never mind that: he wishes he was younger. He’s so much older than he should be. He has enough weight on his shoulders to make his collarbones fracture and his spine compound and smash into itself. In the mornings, sometimes he can’t get up. He’s so much older than he should be. He’s got the emotional capacity of someone twenty years younger, but he’s lived twenty more years of tragedy and _almost’s_ , but just-not-quite’s. So many letters that may not make it in time or receive a handwritten reply.

 _It_ is back. Onni, however, is not.

(But he has to be, so he wishes he was a flower.)

Onni is a protector, he is a guardian, he is a gargoyle and a stone sentinel the shape of a knight; it is written into the lines of his face and the curves of his body he doesn’t know very well anymore. He finds it hard to look in mirrors, because his family’s face stares back at him, and everyone who once looked at him more than once. Sister, cousin, parents, grandma. Reynir.

Onni’s arms are big enough for a protector, for a guardian, for a man with too much and much too little. He has a body too willing to become a wasteland. Arms big enough to hold all of the known world within their grasps but too small to hold his sister. Reynir is a boy hanging onto him by the tail of his coat, belonging to a body too willing to become a wasteland.

Reynir is a boy too willing to become a wasteland. He’s an idiot, just like Tuuri is, just like Lalli can be, just like Onni sees in himself when he catches his eyes in the mirror, softened around the edges when he thinks about—never mind. It’s just that he’s the embodiment of the feeling of _tired_ that eats at Onni’s bones more deftly than the rash could; he is a flame that sparks too bright and too large and burns your hand before becoming small and eventually snuffing out. He’s a quiet voice that sounds like any optimism Onni has in his subconscious; he is a promise and a _maybe_ and a just-not-quite. He’s just not _quiet_. Reynir talks like the world did not end and like he does not realize the things he says. Soft spoken, sometimes, like a coward, and then loud, says what he means like he is brave. 

Reynir looks at Onni like he is growing before his very eyes.

He wonders what he must look like to Reynir. Does he see the tired or the sad or the mean? Does he know what it’s like to hold the world but to be so weak you drop it all? He wonders if he knows what the forest is like. How you can get lost in it and maybe never be found. How Onni wishes he could never be found. How Onni is not a flower or a forest or a bird of prey but just a man who is sickeningly human and tired and sad and _mean._ Faced with this adversary that is Reynir; his sister’s protector, his cousin’s guardian, not a gargoyle or a stone statue because he’s too pretty and moves like water and wind and the swaying of trees, Onni crumbles like old books, crumples like paper. 

Reynir looks at Onni like he is a flower; like he is something worth looking at. Did Reynir know what he was getting himself into when he wandered too far and caught Onni’s eye? Did Onni leave bruises into Reynir’s spine when he shoved his lean body against the rocks? The same body that’s so willing to bend and break and build itself up again like it’s nothing, like he’s lived no life but still thinks shepherding is harder than conversing with Onni. That body that knows forgiveness and a soft hug better than it knows the sharp confines of—of whatever Onni’s mind has turned into.

Reynir, as a given, drives Onni damn near insane, and he looks at Onni like maybe he is redeemable.

 

(The memory of Reynir, and fleeting images of autumn-red hair, reside in Onni’s front pocket whenever he is not dreaming.)

(Sometimes, he thinks about him the way one thinks of a flower.)

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this cause i know reynni fans are grasping at straws and what little fan content we have; so take this measly contribution and let it nourish you like scraps from a dumpster. i hope someone out there enjoys this 4am unbeta’d cold meds rambling that probably reads as tumblr fakedeep, and i hope it makes you feel something other than Complete Distaste! please feel free to scream about reynni with me in the comments; minna sundberg has hurt me, my family, and these lovely, lovely boys.


End file.
